News

“The World of a Tiny Insect,” by Zhang Daye, translated by Xiaofei Tian

“Penguins,” edited by Pablo Garcia Borboroglu and P. Dee Boersma

UW Press remembers Leroy (Lee) Soper, longtime member of the advisory board, who passed away on Tuesday, February 2, on the eve of his ninety-second birthday.

The four presses involved in the Mellon University Press Diversity FellowshipProgram are now all actively recruiting for positions (see joint announcement). If you know of excellent candidates, please send them our way (applications due March 15)! Read a piece by UW Press editor in chief and Principal Investigator Larin McLaughlin at the UW Press blog and an interview with the MIT Press editorial director Gita Manaktala at the MIT Press blog.

The Association for Asian Studies has announced the winners of this year’s AAS book prizes. Xiaofei Tian is winner of the Hanan Translation Prize for World of a Tiny Insect. Author Wai-yee Li (one of the translators of Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan and a coauthor of The Letter to Ren An) has won the Levenson Prize (Pre-1900 China) for her latest monograph (published by Harvard Asia Center). Congratulations to our authors and all involved!

P. Dee Boersma, author of Penguins, is a finalist for the prestigious Indianapolis Prize for conservation, sponsored by the Indianapolis Zoological Society (UW Today; Daily). Boersma and the five other finalists have been awarded $10,000 each and the winner will receive $250,000 and a medal. Listen to a recent interview with Boersma about iGalapagos on KUOW’s “The Record,” as well as in National Geographicand Smithsonian.com.

From February 3-6, we will be at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Washington, DC. UW Press Advancement and Grants Manager Beth Fuget will be representing the Press, unveiling several new books, and meeting with partners to discuss our Mellon Foundation-funded collaboration, the Art History Publication Initiative.

Here is a taste of some recent and forthcoming titles in art history and visual culture we’ll be featuring at the conference, but be sure to stop by our booth (#322) to see our full slate of books. Follow along on social media with #caa2016.

Art History Publication Initiative Books

“Excavating the Afterlife” by Guolong Lai

“Imperial Illusions” by Kristina Kleutghen

“Building a Sacred Mountain” by Wei-Cheng Lin

“Chang’an Avenue and the Modernization of Chinese Architecture” by Shuishan Yu

Forthcoming Books

This publication presents a fresh take on Bhupen Khakhar’s artistic, social, and spiritual interests. With personal and touching contributions by those who knew him, this richly illustrated book is an essential reference to one of the most compelling and unique voices in 20th century art, as well as a significant contribution to the field of international modernism.

The objects featured in this book tell the story of the Endeavour voyage and its impact ahead of the 250th anniversary of this seminal mission’s launch. The surviving illustrations are the most important body of images produced since Europeans entered this region, matching the truly historic value of the plant specimens and artifacts that will be seen alongside them.

The collection contains a wide range of mostly 20th century pieces that illustrate the creative achievements and cultural meanings of art objects produced and collected at a time of great international expansion of the market for African art. The objects are framed and interpreted within academic essays that highlight the significant role that African makers and dealers have played in shaping Western understanding of African art.

Davalos combines decolonial theory with extensive archival and field research to offer a new critical perspective on Chicana/o art. Using Los Angeles as a case study, she presents her most ambitious project to date in this examination of fifty years of Chicana/o art production in a major urban area.

It’s a fact: Books make great gifts. They’re easy to wrap, make you look smart, and can transport you to other times and places without you having to leave the comfort of your favorite chair. So, go ahead, give the gift of knowledge. (Side effects may include curiosity and an increased appreciation of beauty.) Whether you’re shopping for history buffs, arts and culture fans, or nature lovers, we’ve got you covered.

To help you in your gift hunting efforts, don’t miss our Holiday Sale 2015. From now until December 31, 2015, get 40% off your favorite University of Washington Press titles with promo code WHLD. Questions? Contact Rachael Levay at remann [at] uw [dot] edu.

Check out our recommendations for the bibliophiles in your life, along with suggested gift pairings:

“Williams does a marvelous job of evoking the cityscape that used to be. He clues us in to the spirit of civic ambition that drove Seattle’s geographical transformations. He methodically chronicles the stages by which its regrade, canal and landfill projects were accomplished. And he’s meticulous about placing his readers on present-day street corners where they can, with some sleight of mind, glimpse the hills, lake shores and tide flats that vanished.”—Michael Upchurch,Seattle Times

“Melinda Bargreen’s Classical Seattle is a who’s who of the city’s classical-music scene over the past half-century, an entertaining recapitulation of interviews she did while serving as the music critic for The Seattle Times and writing for other publications.”—Ellen Emry Heltzel, Seattle Times

This groundbreaking study of Black women’s participation in comic art includes interviews with artists and writers and suggests that the treatment of the Black female subject in sequential art says much about the place of people of African descent in national ideology in the United States and abroad.

Pair it with: A collector’s edition of a beloved comic or graphic novel

“[T]his is a well-researched, richly detailed history of trout and trout fishing in the Mountain West that, as the author promises, ‘overturns the biggest fish story ever told.'”—John Gierach, Wall Street Journal

“A measure of any book is whether it makes you think beyond its pages, and Bike Battles did just that for me. My dad used to tell me that if I got only one thing out of a book-an interesting fact, a point of view I hadn’t previously considered, something helpful to my life or just entertainment-the book was worth its cover price. By that standard Bike Battles is a bargain. It allowed me to see the last 150 years of riding in America like a mosaic on the wall. I won’t look at parked cars the same way again. The book ought to give today’s bicycle advocates a sense of their place in history and make them proud to continue the battle.”—Grant Petersen, Wall Street Journal

Raymond shows how, during the Civil Rights Movement, a handful of celebrities risked their careers by crusading for racial equality, and forged the role of celebrity in American political culture with a focus on the “Leading Six” trailblazers—Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dick Gregory, and Sidney Poitier.

Pair it with: The gift of solidarity in the form of a donation to a civil rights organization in the recipient’s name

This catalog has been published in conjunction with the namesake exhibition, co-organized by Portland Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, and the Paul G. Allen Family Collection. The book explores the exhibition to chronicle the evolution of landscape painting through the ages and features thirty-nine paintings, each accompanied by detailed essays that comprise a full discussion of the formal intellectual development of the landscape form.

Jamie Hale of the Oregonian calls the exhibition “a rare and incredible showcase,” Alison Levasseur covers the exhibit at Architectural Digest, and Bob Hicks of Oregon ArtsWatch writes that this “blockbuster delivers the goods. The 39 paintings…make for a ravishing stroll through the art history at a high level. The selection is smart and concise, following the concept of nature through several centuries and styles and setting it provocatively on its head.” Use and follow the #SeeingNature hashtag on social media.